This episode discusses sensitive subjects, including psychiatric abuse, false memories, psychiatric over-medication, and mental health struggles involving self-harm.
What happens when a culture’s collective fear is weaponized against the very people seeking help?
In this week’s conversation, I’m talking with my friend and author Jamie Lyn Weaver. Jamie’s new memoir, Locked in the Psych Ward, chronicles her survival during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. She was kept in a locked ward for four years, heavily medicated, and coached into “recovering” memories of horrific events that never occurred.
Jamie discusses the audacity it took to finally put her story on paper and how the writing process itself became her path back to aliveness. We explore the role of “retractors” in healing and why her story is a vital warning for the world we live in today.
I’m Nancy Norbeck, and I’m your Messy Muse Mentor. I help people feel alive again through curiosity and play.
In this episode, I discuss:
- The Anatomy of a Panic: How psychiatric “experts” used leading questions and hypnosis to manufacture a crisis.
- The Witness Effect: Why having a safe, non-judgmental witness is the most powerful tool for creative and personal recovery.
- True vs. Not True: The mental struggle of surviving a ward that functioned like a cult.
- Creative Resilience: How Jamie moved from a childhood belief that she wasn’t creative to writing a prize-winning memoir.
Ready to send your inner critic to summer camp for an hour and just enjoy some creative company?We get together once a month for a relaxed, co-working-style session where you can work on whatever you want—without any pressure to do it “right.” We send the shoulds and inner critics off to summer camp where they’re kept busy rather than getting in our way.
Episode breakdown:
0:00 About this episode, and content warning
1:05 Introducing Jamie Lyn Weaver: Surviving the Satanic Panic
2:50 The award-winning art Jamie forgot she made
5:53 Inside the Locked Ward: Why Jamie refused art therapy
8:42 The “Braun” Ward: 4 years of false memories and forced meds
12:56 The lack of advocacy and the “insurance game”
15:19 Dungeons & Dragons, Heavy Metal, and the 80s Panic
19:11 From intuitive writing to a completed memoir
24:15 The 100 Moments: Using structure to process the impossible
28:16 Finding the right coach: The power of being witnessed
32:58 “The police will meet you at the bottom of the stairs”
36:52 The “Feeling Wheel” and finding words for trauma
41:50 The “Apothecary” Reality: Surviving over-medication
46:33 Why being a “retractor” is a long road to aliveness
51:43 Jamie’s warning for the modern world
Show Links: Jamie Lyn Weaver
Jamie’s website
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Transcript: Jamie Lyn Weaver
Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:06]:
Welcome to Follow Your Curiosity, ordinary people, extraordinary creativity. Here’s how to get unstuck. I’m your host, creativity coach, Nancy Norbeck. Let’s go. Welcome to this special episode of Follow Your Curiosity featuring my friend and fellow author, Jamie Lynn Weaver. Jamie was one of the many people harmed by the satanic panic of the nineteen eighties, and she has just released her first book, a memoir about that experience and the long road back from it. I believe Jamie’s story is important, not only as a personal story of survival and healing, but also as a reminder of what can happen when fear, coercion, and misinformation take hold in a culture. One important note before we begin.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:50]:
While we do not go into graphic detail in this conversation, we do discuss some sensitive subjects connected to Jamie’s experience, including false memories, psychiatric over medication and mistreatment, and mental health struggles, including self harm. I think you’ll find this conversation thoughtful, eye opening, and ultimately hopeful. And if you aren’t familiar with the satanic panic of the nineteen eighties, you may also find find it surprisingly relevant to the world we’re living in now. And now, let me introduce you to Jamie. My guest this week is Jamie Lynn Weaver, who is a first time author with a master’s degree in library science. In 2024, she received an honorable mention for the first chapter of her memoir, Locked in the Psych Ward, a memoir of broken promises and false confessions at the prestigious San Miguel Writers Conference and Literary Festival. After attending the conference, there was no stopping her. She was determined to tell her personal account of the intricacies and consequences of being kept in a locked psych ward during the satanic panic era.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:54]:
I invited Jamie to come on the podcast today to tell us about the process of writing about such a, a difficult subject, which I know has taken her a while, but as her own bio says here, Jamie is a very, very determined person, and she was not going to let anything get in her way. And I know that she has quite the story to tell. I have read her book already, and I recommend it. We are not going to rehash all of the gory details because that’s what the book is for, but we wanna hear about what it’s like to get a story like this out on paper. So with that, Jamie, welcome so much to Follow Your Curiosity.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:02:38]:
Thank you so much for having me.
Nancy Norbeck [00:02:40]:
So I do start everybody with the same question. And that question is, were you a creative kid or did you discover your creative side later on?
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:02:50]:
No. I was not a creative kid. I had a mom who drew well. She drew all my paper dolls. She loved to draw children, and she was a good copier. She copied, Hedy Lamarr at that time. They were beautiful, but nothing that I did could meet her expectations. So I kinda stayed away from that.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:03:18]:
So, no, I was not creative. When I went to high school, I loved being in the art department, and there was all kinds of creative things that went on in there. And I really did discover that the thing I like to do the best was doodling, so to speak. I know I did a few pieces. In fact, I just remembered that I received a gold key way back when for some of the art that I did, and I don’t I I found it when it was going through my jewelry drawer.
Nancy Norbeck [00:03:53]:
Wow. And you’d completely forgotten about it.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:03:57]:
Mhmm. Wow.
Nancy Norbeck [00:04:00]:
So it was there and you just didn’t realize it.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:04:04]:
I still struggle with art. So what I’ve been doing lately is splashing coffee on paper and letting it dry and then tracing around it with a thin black pen. And there’s something about the tracing, and there is something about the unevenness of it that gives me some peace, except that sometimes when I overstep it and it doesn’t look good, that’s where my eye goes. And so I’m learning my therapist told me I was supposed to put that up and always look at that spot until it doesn’t bother me anymore.
Nancy Norbeck [00:04:48]:
Interesting. Does that work?
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:04:52]:
I haven’t had the courage to put them up yet.
Nancy Norbeck [00:04:54]:
Fair enough. Fair enough. That’s a cool idea, though. It’s a very cool idea, especially since it involves making a mess. It’s not
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:05:08]:
that big of a mess. I put them on a cookie tray, and I let them dry that way. So there really isn’t any mess anywhere. All of the spots are on the piece of paper, and when they’re dry, they’re fine.
Nancy Norbeck [00:05:23]:
Yeah. But you’re deliberately spilling something on the paper, which is kind of there’s a little mischief in that, Jamie.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:05:29]:
Really?
Nancy Norbeck [00:05:33]:
So you got to do art in high school that actually won you, an award that you forgot about. And then I don’t my sense is that you never really did much else until fairly recently. Is that right?
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:05:53]:
Yeah. That’s right. Because in the hospital, I refuse to go to heart therapy.
Nancy Norbeck [00:06:00]:
Oh, that’s interesting. I would not go. Yeah. I mean, that, that makes sense to me having read the book, considering that so many different forms of therapy in there kind of got turned into so many things that were not real and kind of were weaponized in many ways.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:06:24]:
Mhmm. Mhmm.
Nancy Norbeck [00:06:29]:
That’s like I said, we’re not gonna rehash all of the gory details, but the the story really is to read to read now what was done forty years ago for me, was like a case study in why there are so many ethical, you know, boundaries and restrictions in place on how therapy is conducted now so that it’s so much harder to, you know, to take therapeutic practices and turn them into weapons and, and misuse them the way that they were misused back then. You know, I could kind of see I mean, I’m not a therapist, but just knowing that there are, you know, practices and licensing boards, and I mean, and I’m sure that there were licensing boards then too, but but they’re much stricter about how things are done now so that when things aren’t done properly, you can report somebody and say, hey, look, this is this is not the way this is supposed to happen, and this is harmful. And, you know, you’re not allowed to do things in certain ways. And reading your story, it was just mind blowing to me. Some of the things that that they were able to do. I mean, the notion that you got to pick your own dose of a medication, like, what the heck? What the, what even is that?
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:07:58]:
You didn’t listen to me. I want a peach one and I got a purple or another color because it was stronger.
Nancy Norbeck [00:08:07]:
Well, and the amount of, of medication that they were able to put you on was, I mean, I read those numbers and I was like, how? How?
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:08:19]:
Right.
Nancy Norbeck [00:08:20]:
Just, just horrifying. But we are, we are getting a little bit cart before the horse here, because even though we’re not gonna rehash the details, I think we need to set the scene a little bit. So would, would you like to at least give a little intro into the, the backstory just a tiny bit?
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:08:42]:
Sure. I was 39 years old. I was in a marriage that I didn’t want to be in. I was acting out sexually and had no idea why I was doing what I was doing. And that was around the time that Sybil came out. And one afternoon, I happened to see the movie. And I thought, man, I wonder if I’m multiple. Mom was, has psychosis, and my dad drank, and I was losing it.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:09:25]:
I bought a Cabbage Patch doll. I wanted to return to childhood and start all over. So I used to go to the park and sit on slides and just while away the day, and one kid said, when you come down off that slide, I wanna go down. And I thought it’s time. It’s time to get some more help. So I purposely reached out to a 911 because there was no way other way, and I asked for a psychiatrist who possibly knew about multiplicity. And I was given Doctor Braun’s name, and I made an appointment, and I went to visit him. And within an hour, I was told that there was room in his ward and that I would be admitted for three months.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:10:17]:
And there was a promised, diagnosis and treatment plan at the end of those three months.
Nancy Norbeck [00:10:24]:
Only that’s not what happened.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:10:26]:
Not what happened.
Nancy Norbeck [00:10:27]:
Yeah. And you were there for four years. Four years. Unbelievable.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:10:32]:
Four years in one week.
Nancy Norbeck [00:10:34]:
Unbelievable. And just it’s funny. We hear the word gaslighting all the time now, and it seems so inadequate to what happened to you. And, and again, we’re not going to put you through all of that again here, but, but just so, so much for people who haven’t read the book yet. So so much that was predetermined for Jamie about what had happened to her regardless of what her actual story was, and so many things that were, you know, oh, you’ve said this, so it must be about that regardless of what she was saying. And and so the whole experience was nothing like what we would call a therapeutic experience now
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:11:25]:
at all. Mhmm.
Nancy Norbeck [00:11:27]:
Yeah. In fact, now I think we would we we would no doubt condemn it in the harshest terms. Let’s just put it that way. And and in fact, Doctor Braun, before he died, was pretty much condemned in those harshest terms, from what I saw. I mean, he he lost his license just about everywhere he could possibly lose his license and ended up in a state where he was it that he didn’t have to have a license or he didn’t have to have certain
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:11:53]:
Montana, they did not have to have a license.
Nancy Norbeck [00:11:55]:
Yeah. Or
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:11:56]:
they didn’t either that or they didn’t have to tell what they that they lost one in Illinois.
Nancy Norbeck [00:12:04]:
Yeah. So so that was, you know, trying to get around restrictions in order to keep practicing is not a great look.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:12:15]:
No. And then Yeah. Doctor Bobbie did her educ her degree was not in psychology. It was in in education. And I clearly remember her sitting on my bed early, early on saying, you know, I was a gym teacher.
Nancy Norbeck [00:12:39]:
Oh, lord. I laugh only because it’s so obviously ridiculous. But but ridiculous isn’t anything compared to the level of harm that people in those positions do.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:12:56]:
And we didn’t have any advocacy. And I think that’s part of what I’m hoping is today. There was no advocate for me. I mean, my husband wasn’t gonna come get me. I didn’t have everybody to come and get me. And even if they came, I don’t think they would have let me out because they knew what they had. They had someone who had a bazillion dollars in insurance. Right.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:13:22]:
And by gosh and by golly, they were gonna use every penny of it, and they did.
Nancy Norbeck [00:13:27]:
And it didn’t matter what happened to you as long as they got to use that policy. As long
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:13:31]:
as they got to use that money.
Nancy Norbeck [00:13:33]:
Right. Right. And so they were willing to make up whatever they had to make up. And and that’s the thing. There was no no conscience under it and no concern for the person in their care. And so, you know, and and you could not have been the only one in that ward that was experiencing the same thing. I mean, you just couldn’t have been.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:13:58]:
I wasn’t. And that was that’s been something that still goes through my mind. And it’s something that was hard to address in the book and was hard to write about was how much did they really believe? Was this vindictive? I do believe that Braun believed that there were satanic people on every corner. I’m not sure about Doctor Sachs. I’m not sure about the staff. They were all educated through doctor Braun and the cohorts and at the conferences. But did they really believe, or were they in it for the money and the prestige? They were known throughout the world. We had people that came in from Denmark.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:14:53]:
We’ve had people all over. They were famous, and we were their guinea pigs.
Nancy Norbeck [00:15:01]:
Well and there’s something very ironic in the idea that they were out to fight against and possibly expose a satanic cult, but they were behaving an awful lot like a cult themselves. Oh, I see
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:15:19]:
that on the book. Yeah. Yeah. I was in a cult that I could not get out of.
Nancy Norbeck [00:15:23]:
Right. And that you didn’t even join of your own free will.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:15:26]:
No. Because I signed my own self in. Right. I was committed. I signed my own self in.
Nancy Norbeck [00:15:32]:
Right. I mean, that’s that’s incredibly ironic. And and as I think I told you, you know, I what I remember of that era, you know, I was in middle school and high school then. And what I remember was the whole thing about, you know, oh, you know, if you’re listening to the heavy metal bands, they’re they’re all satanic and they’re trying you know, if you listen to those, you’re gonna go to hell. And if you play those records backwards, you’re gonna hear all of these evil messages and that kind of thing. Plus, you know, if you played Dungeons and Dragons, that was how they were gonna get you too. You know? And now I’m like, Dungeons and Dragons is just a game. It’s just a game.
Nancy Norbeck [00:16:13]:
There’s nothing on those records. But, you know, people believed it, and that’s how they got away with it is that enough people believed all of that stuff. And that’s why it was called a panic. So that, you know, people just got sucked into it, and they were willing to believe all sorts of crazy things because that was just kind of in the air back then. And that helped people like them get away with what they were doing to folks like you. And we would hope that that sort of thing wouldn’t happen now, and yet yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:16:50]:
And it started earlier than that, though. It started with the McMartin preschool case. It started with preschoolers.
Nancy Norbeck [00:16:57]:
Yeah. And I had not heard of that story until you started mentioning what had happened to you. And I started looking things up and I was like, oh, it was way more than what I remember.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:17:09]:
See, I knew nothing of that. I was still naive when I got out. So I didn’t even know it was called the satanic panic era. I had no clue until I sat down and started to write the book and did the research. This was much bigger than I ever, ever, ever dreamed of. And still sometimes it comes and gets me. It’s like I lived through such an enormously big era. Yeah.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:17:52]:
Yeah. In a
Nancy Norbeck [00:17:54]:
way that most people never even knew was happening.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:17:59]:
No. And I was the victim. I wasn’t watching somebody. I was in it. Right. Right.
Nancy Norbeck [00:18:09]:
Right. And you lived to tell the tale. And I was interesting for me because as we were talking the other day, when we were planning this conversation, you know, I’ve known you for almost eleven years, which is mind blowing to me. And so I knew little bits and pieces of this, but never knew the whole story until I sat down and read the book. And while I was reading the book, you know, I knew that, you know, you were spending a lot of time working on it and that you had a lot of things that you were working on in writing even before you started working on this. But while I was reading it, I thought, I cannot imagine what it must be like to sit down. I mean, first of all, to go through this, but then to sit down and decide that you’re gonna go through the process of putting it on paper, which is a whole other thing. It’s not just writing down the story.
Nancy Norbeck [00:19:11]:
It’s revising the story. It’s making sure the story makes sense. It’s all of the different layers of things that you have to do with that story once you have it on paper. And so I am really curious to hear what that has been like for you, especially because when we first met, it was in the intuitive writing class that I offered back in 2015 as part of a SoulCollage workshop. And if I correctly recall, it was one of the first times, maybe even the first time that you really started to play with writing at all. Yeah. And I remember you kind of being mystified by the whole process back then. And it’s, it’s amazing to me what you’ve done since then.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:20:05]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:20:10]:
I mean, I was impressed with what you did back then just to just at the very beginning, but this is in ten years, this is a lot. Yep, bro. Yeah. So where where did you I mean, you did that course with me, which was just a four week thing, so we won’t overinflate that particular course, but I think it was a starting point. Sure. And then from there, you were working on some other stories. And I know you had joined a writer’s group at one point.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:20:44]:
I did. I’m still there.
Nancy Norbeck [00:20:46]:
Because I remember at first you, you were saying they’re talking about these things that I have no idea what they’re talking about. And, and you’re still in a writer’s group. So obviously you’ve figured out what a lot of those things are at this point, but, but then, then it all shifted.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:21:07]:
I had taken a few more. I had taken, a class called align your story, and it was supposed to help you put your story in order. I never did very well with it, but she also offered something similar to you where she would give you, she’d write read a poem and she’d give you five words, and then she gave you time to write, and you had to incorporate those five words into what you were writing. So there were five words that you had to get into the story. So I’ve I wasn’t writing automatically. I was trying to get those words in the story, and I found that they were much more interesting, and I had much more fun trying to figure out how to get a purple penguin in a story. And some of those were really cool, and I think that’s how the world started to open up, was writing for only fifteen minutes, remembering what the poem had to say, trying to get those five words in there, and there was no pressure. If they weren’t in there, they weren’t in there.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:22:33]:
And if they were, they were. So it gave me a lot of freedom. It gave me structure. I need structure. I needed I need to know step one, step two, step three, step four. So step one was to listen to the poem. Step two was to write down the words. Step three was to set my timer for fifteen minutes, and step five was to sit and write.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:22:55]:
And so I enjoyed that a whole lot, and that kind of freed me up to not being worried, but I was putting down on my piece of paper. Mhmm.
Nancy Norbeck [00:23:10]:
I
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:23:11]:
wasn’t being judged. I wasn’t being read. I could was the only one that could say this was crap. And then I would read another one and say, this is not bad. That was fun. It was fun to put the sun and the moon and the snow all in the same story or whatever.
Nancy Norbeck [00:23:30]:
Yeah. So from there, you started digging more deeply, I remember. You were doing some autobiographical stuff for a while, weren’t you?
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:23:44]:
I was doing stories from here. Retirement living isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and the shenanigans that happened behind the scenes. So I’ve read, I wrote some stories about thought and I also did a four year vision quest. And I wrote about the vision quest, and that helped me learn about structure and how you start at the beginning and how one flows into the other into the other. That went through the writer’s group, which helped because they caught the inconsistencies, the what ifs, the you could do’s. It was only when I look back, it was only a 100 pages or a 150 pages. It wasn’t very long. And there’s part of me that might go back to that now that I’ve got a better handle on things.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:24:41]:
I’m not sure about that, though. So all of that and then when COVID hit and that free class came in, and I signed up for even a deeper, dive into the writing process. And that’s when they had us write a 100 moments, and I wrote a 100 moments of childhood. And then I thought, wonder what it would be like to write a 100 moments in the hospital.
Nancy Norbeck [00:25:15]:
There are
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:25:15]:
more than a 100 moments, but I wrote down a 100 moments of that. And I thought, you know, you really, at times, need and want to go back to therapy. But where does one start? Yeah. Sessions are only fifty minutes. Mhmm. And I can’t start with the tail end when the beginning was part of it and the middle was part of it. Where do I start? And when I did call around, I called around once. And and when I said that I was probably multiple, they didn’t want anything to do with me.
Nancy Norbeck [00:25:56]:
Mhmm.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:25:56]:
So I really didn’t know who to reach out to and when to reach out. But all I knew is that my need was to see my story on paper from beginning to end. I wanted to see it in sequence. And there was also that secret thought is if I ever go back to therapy, the first thing they’re gonna read is my book.
Nancy Norbeck [00:26:23]:
Yeah.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:26:23]:
Don’t have to go through it. You can say that was some story. What aspect do you wanna talk about? And I didn’t have to fill them in about the beginning and the middle and the end because you have the picture. Mhmm. Gave me the freedom to what would a therapist want to know?
Nancy Norbeck [00:26:49]:
Yeah.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:26:51]:
Part of that course that I took was you can reach out to a call to have a book coach. It was free. So I thought, why not? So I picked up the phone, said that I wanted the free call with a book coach, and they teamed me up with a book coach who has been with me from day one, and we talked about it. I talked about the three stories that I had, and I said, I don’t know which one should choose. And she said, send me all three. So I sent her the vision quest. I sent her the stories about where I live, and I had written just a little bit about being at rush and being a satanic cult victim. And she got back to me and she said, vision quest is interesting because usually white women don’t do vision quest.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:27:52]:
Mhmm. And your stories where you live are, they’re okay. But what I really think is interesting is your time at Rush. And I said, yeah. It’s the hardest. And she said, yes. The hardest is always the best story you’ve got.
Nancy Norbeck [00:28:16]:
And sense to me.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:28:18]:
If you want to take that leap, I’ll take it with you. And so that first draft was a throw up on a piece of paper. Mhmm. I started out with having to leave my grandmother at a year old and go live in a house with a mommy that didn’t know what to do with me. And I went through all of the high school years and all of the outbreaks and all of the sexual stuff and all of the hospital stuff. And we’d meet every week. I’d send her my my my draft. Friday by by dinner time, she had to have it.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:29:04]:
Sunday morning, we on a Zoom call, and she’d give me back my piece of paper. And bless her heart, she was always with me. She was always there. And when I decided to do draft two, she knew more about me, and she knew what what she could do. And so she let me pick where I wanted to start. I didn’t start with childhood. I started with in Kmart buying my baby bottles of pacifiers. She said, that’s a good start.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:29:38]:
But she knew me well enough at that time that when I would send something, she would say, this is hard. I know there’s more than there, and I want it on paper, and we’ll talk about it on Sunday. So she knew when to push, and she knew when to held back. And that’s when I started the serious, serious research. How was it done? How did they really do this to me? There was so much guilt. There was so much shame. How could you have lied for four years? How could you have done that? Looking for how it was done. And the, yeah, the YouTube of of, off sheet, that fifty minute, he told me exactly how it was done.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:30:44]:
And when I really realized how it was done, I was so angry.
Nancy Norbeck [00:30:49]:
Oh, I bet.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:30:50]:
Oh, man. I was angry And I was scared, and I was angry, and I didn’t know where to go next. And I would go outside and scream and holler and throw stones, and then come back and sit my ass in the paper, and I’d look again. And I researched satanic panic, and I researched Braun, and I researched Bobbi, and I researched sand therapy, and I researched all of the things that were done to me. And we got through draft three two, and I sent it through writer’s group. And then we started draft three, and she was even more diligent than She knew me way, way, way too much. Okay. And she was always right.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:31:39]:
She always knew when I was holding back. She always knew when there was more there. She always knew, and she always was there, always at my side, always in my head. I think she wrote with me Mhmm. When I wrote. I was writing for her even though it was writing for me, but I was writing for her. Somebody was listening to my story.
Nancy Norbeck [00:32:06]:
Yeah.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:32:06]:
Somebody was not going to judge me. And that’s how draft three came about. And somewhere in there, the possibility that, guess, it could be published. Mhmm. Yes. It needs to be published. People need to know.
Nancy Norbeck [00:32:35]:
Yeah.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:32:37]:
They need to know what happened. They need to know not to go with the first diagnosis. They need to have an advocate. All the things I did not have, all the signs that I missed. There were so many signs, so many, and I missed them all.
Nancy Norbeck [00:32:58]:
Yeah. Well and once you were in there, it wouldn’t have mattered how many signs you saw, you couldn’t get back out.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:33:04]:
No. As I told her, I signed the five day. I’d heard it news on the floor that you could sign a five day and you could get out of there. And there’s part of me that knew better. Where the heck was I gonna go? I had no money. But anyway, I thought it was a good idea. So I straightened up and I was a good girl, and I asked for a five day. I said, I I went out of here.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:33:26]:
I didn’t sign myself in. And they all listened to me, and they said, you can sign yourself out. That’s for sure. But the police will meet you at the bottom of the stairs when you beat the door. So that ended that little merry chase.
Nancy Norbeck [00:33:44]:
I had an answer for everything, those people.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:33:47]:
Mhmm.
Nancy Norbeck [00:33:47]:
For absolutely everything.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:33:49]:
Yeah. You’re suicidal, you’re homicidal, your charts say that you’re not safe to go out into the world. So go ahead, try to leave.
Nancy Norbeck [00:33:59]:
Yeah. But but what strikes me is that your book coach, what she was really doing I mean, obviously, she was doing book coaching. But more than that, what she was doing was witnessing you Yes. In a way that they never did. And and that I think is is a big part of why that process was so powerful for you. Yes. You know, she was was witnessing not only your your creative process, but you as a human being. And there’s so much power just in that.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:34:40]:
And she also did journalism herself and did did some crime work. And so she had that background and she had a huge interest in the criminality of my story. And I don’t know how many people could have done that. I mean, if you’re if you’re a book coach and you’re writing romance or you’re writing sci fi or something of that, I don’t think you would have been as interested, but the fact that she had that criminal bent to her, her her helped her be as objective and as sympathetic or whatever she was to me.
Nancy Norbeck [00:35:27]:
Yeah. You you definitely got the right coach.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:35:31]:
I got the right coach.
Nancy Norbeck [00:35:32]:
Yes. You did. I did. And I’m curious too. I wanna go back to something you you said about when you started this. You said that you wanted to get it all out on paper, that you felt you needed to get it all out on paper in part because you wanted to take it to a therapist. And I’m I’m curious to know what you had in mind when you first had that thought, because what you ended up with in that process was really different. And I’m just wondering, you know, like, what you were imagining when you first thought about writing it out.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:36:11]:
I never thought I would publish it. I wasn’t out to publish a book at that time. That was the farthest thing from my mind. And I think it wasn’t until I started the research. I didn’t even know it was called satanopanik. And when I learned that it was and how big it was and how much of a part of it it was and how criminally wrong it was, then I got determined to get that story out. Does it answer that question?
Nancy Norbeck [00:36:52]:
I’m I’m thinking like and you could tell me if I’m thinking of this the wrong way, but you said that you you wanted to get it on paper.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:37:00]:
I did.
Nancy Norbeck [00:37:02]:
Did you just want to, like, see it outside of your own head? You know, before you started doing all
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:37:10]:
of the research and all of that. I have a hard time articulating.
Nancy Norbeck [00:37:15]:
Mhmm.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:37:15]:
I can I can go deeper and feelings are hard for me? In fact, I have a three ceiling wheels on my refrigerator. So what am I feeling today? Because I don’t know. But when I wrote, that barrier seemed to be broken, and I’m able to it sure felt like blah blah blah. And then Kim would Kim would help too. You know? How did that feel for you? I don’t know. How did it feel? And then I’d sit down on paper, and it felt, oh, okay. It felt like I looked up the one word. I woke up and said, well, there’s other words to that.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:37:57]:
Okay. Then maybe no. That’s the one I need. It didn’t come it it it came from being on the paper using the thesaurus. That’s what I want. It came looking up. What did it mean that I didn’t talk for three solid days? What what was that all about? Now I learned that that had part of do with trauma. What did trauma feel like? I don’t know.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:38:25]:
Let’s go up to the feeling wheel. And through that paper, through those transferring of words, through that’s that’s how it worked.
Nancy Norbeck [00:38:38]:
That makes sense to me.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:38:39]:
The writing was transformational. Yeah. Absolutely transform It was. Because I think you don’t get so much out in fifteen minutes. Who wants to sit down and for the next two hours and hear about my story?
Nancy Norbeck [00:38:53]:
No one. So did you do most of it in fifteen minute chunks?
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:38:58]:
No. I would write all day. Oh, wow. No. I would get up in the morning. I have my coffee. Sometimes I never did really get dressed, and I would open up the computer and I would write with the music. The music was very important.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:39:16]:
I needed the instrumental. I needed the violins. They always got me. The violins, the pianos. There was one song that no matter when it came down, I cried a bazillion tears. It touched parts of myself that I never allowed out. So between the music and between realizing what was done, It it was the world the world was 06:00 in the morning, and then it would be 07:00 at night. Wow.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:39:55]:
And And then sometimes they wake up in the middle of the night. I was like, oh, I could say, oh, I remembered that one. Jesus, that one was awful. Better write that one down. So some of the nights were and it was, you know, I was I was stuck. It was 2020. It was Mhmm. COVID.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:40:14]:
I couldn’t go anywhere. Yeah. That’s intense, though. It was intense. It was intense, and the emotional pain I kept saying, Jesus, where are the drugs now? There were so many drugs that and that was another thing. There were so many drugs that I don’t really think I processed what was wrong during those four years. There was no time to process it. You’d she’d have sessions with me, like, because I’m gonna read at night, and then came the Xanax and then came the Halcyon and out I went.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:40:55]:
Oh my god. Can’t imagine. I didn’t sit a whole lot with what did they just do to me and what did I just say? You couldn’t. You you couldn’t. So here I was processing what I remember, but there was no drugs. So I had to deal with that deep, gut wrenching, emotional, freaking pain that had nowhere to go, except for throwing stones and yelling F you over and over and over again.
Nancy Norbeck [00:41:36]:
Which was long overdue, frankly, you know, and completely justified. But yeah. Holy moly. They gave you Xanax and Halcyon at the same time. They should have been arrested 72 times.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:41:50]:
But then there was the underall, you know, and the underall was supposed to help with switching. I wasn’t supposed to switch from little to big, and I was little most of the time. But whenever I pissed off Braun, “Up her meds!,” and he’d fly out of my room.
Nancy Norbeck [00:42:10]:
You were a walking apothecary at any given moment.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:42:14]:
Yeah. I was for it wasn’t just me. I I clearly remember them doing blood pressures, before I was able to go anywhere, and it was so low. And they’d say, go for a walk and bring out an adult. So I’d go for a walk, and I’d present as me, and they give
Nancy Norbeck [00:42:38]:
That that’s the other thing that that really struck me reading the book was the, you know, who’s here? Like like, if anything seemed weird, they would accuse you of having a a different personality taking over. And I was like, oh my god. Oh, yeah. Like, I mean, that’s so destabilizing. But
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:42:55]:
then why how did I why did I play that game? Because I had to.
Nancy Norbeck [00:43:01]:
Because you had to. Because even if you tried not to, they would say this is a different personality. I mean, they had the ultimate control mechanism because Oh, yeah. They
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:43:09]:
Of course, you don’t know. There’s somebody inside your quest, though.
Nancy Norbeck [00:43:12]:
Yeah. No matter what you said, they had an answer. Yeah. And they could turn it against you.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:43:18]:
Right. Yeah. Love the one was, well, you don’t have to believe that right now, if you need some space, that’s okay. But still are cold. Yeah. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:43:35]:
I I oh, man. I was I was struck so many times as I was reading by how much courage it took you to go through all of that again. Because most people most people, you can’t get to go back to, you know, anything from their childhood that they didn’t like. Much less and we’re, you know, not to, like, go trauma Olympics here, but, you know, plenty of people won’t go to garden variety things. And you deciding, nope. We’re going here. We’re gonna get this story out and doing the homework and doing the research. And and, I mean, I had no idea when I read it that you had gone back and done all of that, though that makes so much sense.
Nancy Norbeck [00:44:32]:
And, and also, how could you not? Yeah. I mean, you’re you’re the embodiment of that saying the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off. Right? Absolutely. To find out this is what they were doing, and this is how they did it. And how could, how could you not be pissed off by that? You couldn’t possibly. And, and so to to read that story and recognize that the person who wrote it had to go through that at least once in order to get it down, probably several times in order to produce this book is striking enough. But what surprised me when I read it was that I haven’t had that experience, but I could relate to parts of it so much myself even though I hadn’t had it. There there were things in your story, and I read it a couple of weeks ago, so I can’t remember specifically what they were now, but there were parts of it that I was like, oh, I get that feeling.
Nancy Norbeck [00:45:32]:
I understand that feeling. I’ve had that feeling before in a completely different context, but I understand that feeling. I I relate to that even though this wasn’t my story. So I think that there is something universal in your story, even for people who haven’t gone through the specifics where they can read it and say, oh, yeah. I haven’t had this particular experience, but I still relate to this story. And that’s
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:46:00]:
Thank you.
Nancy Norbeck [00:46:01]:
Remarkable too, especially considering that this is your first book, not that you haven’t done plenty of writing over the last ten years. But still, you know, the work that you did to do those three drafts and to get to the point where you could do those three drafts has served you really well.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:46:26]:
Wasn’t easy. I know.
Nancy Norbeck [00:46:33]:
I know.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:46:36]:
But I think it it was easier than if I had really done it, if I really had been an occult. And I really had killed babies, and I really had killed sacrificed animals and had all those orgies and with coffins and all that other crap. That I don’t know if I could have put down on people. That I think would have been way too hard. Some of the saving grace and not saving grace is that I didn’t do any of that. So I’m living with how could you have made up those stories day after day after day after day? Granted, they were the same stories, but with a little bit more embellishment because the more time you had to think about it, the more time it was just it was just a made up freaking story. That’s all. I would make up a different a different story, a different whatever.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:47:46]:
My sand tray had all kinds of stories and I’m not one of them are true, except for me. The right side of my tray, when the people read the book, little about sand trays, on the right side of the tray was me. There was a hospital bed, tiny little itsy bitsy little towel, and there was the figure that was me. And she usually was in that bed. And in there was, if you looked hard enough, was how I was feeling that day. I would find a book or I would find a brighter stone. And if I wanted to be, if I was suicidal, the only way I could do that was bury me. And I would bury me, and then she’d have to find me and pick and and take me unburied.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:48:32]:
But that side was always interesting because it always had what I was feeling that day. Cause I built five days a week. And there was also, which I didn’t put in the book. There was also a two headed dragon that sat in the corner and I made signs true and not true because I always dealt with that true and not true. Is this true, or is this not true? Most of me believed it was not true. They were so damn convincing that it did happen. And then I would go back and think, mama talked about the devil. She was afraid he was gonna come get her.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:49:14]:
Grandma spoke this really crazy language before she left, before she died. And didn’t you see things on the floor? And didn’t you imagine stuff? Maybe what they’re saying is true. No. No. So that dragon always stood there because that was my always my default was true, not true. And it sat under under my hospital bed with me in it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:49:44]:
Did they pick up on that?
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:49:46]:
Bobby did. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:49:47]:
Oh, okay.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:49:48]:
That was towards the end. That was that was what she looked for first. And if I wasn’t buried, then we continue. If I was buried, then there was always hell to pay for that. There was more meds, though. Suicide watch or something something crazy.
Nancy Norbeck [00:50:04]:
Because that’s the right response to somebody who’s suicidal.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:50:07]:
Of course. Of course. Of course. Oh my god. It’s almost laughable to think that they would have believed the things that I said. I mean, how could you believe the things that I said because they’re just so outrageous? Well, the whole thing is so outrageous that they believed any of it. Any of it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:50:30]:
You know, I mean, I I was thinking earlier, you know, no sane person would believe any of the stuff that they believed and yet so many people did. So, you know, I mean, that’s that’s the contradiction.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:50:45]:
12 people on my floor were all telling the same story. That’s still that’s still it’s a mystery to me. How we could all tell similar stories. But then again, when you’re under hypnosis and you’re given cues and you wanna please, because these are the best doctors in the world, of course, you’re gonna come up with the same story because everybody’s told the same story.
Nancy Norbeck [00:51:07]:
Right. And they’re they’re giving you, you know, leading questions and they’re they’re wanting you to tell the same story. Yeah. Yeah.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:51:17]:
And we all did. And some of us made it and some of us didn’t. And I know those who didn’t.
Nancy Norbeck [00:51:27]:
Well, I I just I know, you know, that you’ve you’ve mentioned that you want this book to serve as a a warning and a cautionary tale.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:51:43]:
Mhmm.
Nancy Norbeck [00:51:44]:
And I I really hope that it does. And, you know, I I remember, I don’t remember how long ago it was, a year or two maybe. You sent me a video of people doing a reading from
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:52:04]:
Yes.
Nancy Norbeck [00:52:04]:
Part of it. Was that the San Miguel festival, or was that something else?
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:52:08]:
That was that was from the writer’s group. They once a year now, they’re doing page to stage. And that was the first page to stage done in my area.
Nancy Norbeck [00:52:21]:
How was it for you to watch people perform from it?
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:52:24]:
Oh, that was hard. That was hard. Although I don’t think that they got brought correctly. He was a little bit more smarmy then, but it was a cold reading. Mhmm. So it was what it was, but I still have baby. And I I think I’m going to ask that she get, cremated with me. So baby was part of that performance too.
Nancy Norbeck [00:53:02]:
Baby was the Cabbage Patch doll. Right?
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:53:04]:
Yeah. No. Baby is still with me, and she’s not going nowhere.
Nancy Norbeck [00:53:14]:
It was impressive to see that reading though, even though I’m I’m sure it was tough to watch.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:53:22]:
So you didn’t see the, the documentary?
Nancy Norbeck [00:53:28]:
I don’t remember
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:53:28]:
the documentary. That one is amazing. I’m in it. Bobby’s in it. It’s the YouTube one, The Memory Wars by Matt Archer. If you don’t have a link, I do. It’s in the Send it to me. It’s in the resources section.
Nancy Norbeck [00:53:50]:
Okay.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:53:52]:
So I don’t know if the resources section is in your
Nancy Norbeck [00:53:56]:
I’ll take a look. Advanced stuff. But we’ll definitely put it in the show notes for people.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:54:01]:
It’s in there. Yeah. Somebody that’s called Matt Orchard, he does basically crime, and I still have, well, I wrote that in the book, I still have the sanitary therapy, the one that was being sold. I still have it. Wow. Talk about being something being hard to watch. That’s one of them. Anyway, somebody from the false memory group knew Matt, and they did a a ninety or sixty minute or fifty five minute documentary on false memories.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:54:45]:
And they use part of my, which is part of me, for that documentary. It’s got I don’t know how many thousands of views right now. It’s been up there for a whole while. So
Nancy Norbeck [00:54:58]:
Wow. No. I don’t remember you mentioning that one before.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:55:03]:
Yeah. I’ve had it. I didn’t own it. She was they sold it at at conferences, so I don’t know how many therapists uh-huh. I don’t know how many therapists got their hands on that. It was done by Productions, and I heard Productions has, withdrawn a lot of their videos, that one being one of them. And my girlfriend was a therapist, and she had it and showed it to some of the people that she was some of the therapists in her area. And when she decided she didn’t need that video anymore, she said, do you want it back? And I said, yes, ma’am.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:55:42]:
So it was done in, ‘8 track at the time or whatever that was, and I took it to some place to have it put in CD format. And when I went to pick it up, he said, what was that about? There was just so much screaming going on. I said, yes. There was a lot of screaming. Yes. So us. So I’d also because what I found out was there is in New York, there is an archival, center for satanic panic. And all of the there’s many, many, and I’ve seen some of them.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:56:27]:
There’s been many, videos and snippets from other people’s therapies, other people’s pair everything. So they’ve got archives, and that video is going to be in the archive. And Becky, who is the moderator of false memory, is gonna take my book and put it in the archives in New York. Oh, wonderful. Mhmm. So if anything else, I got I got it into the archives in New York. I had no idea they had archives, and it’s basically for journalists and people that wanna go deeper into that that era, for authentic information.
Nancy Norbeck [00:57:05]:
That’s fantastic. I, I just think, honestly, I know, you know, it’s taken years and a lot of, a lot of, long, long days and deep emotion and determination and courage, like, you know, most of us don’t ever see. And I I think what you’ve done is remarkable, Jamie. I really do.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:57:45]:
That’s hard. I don’t take that moment real well.
Nancy Norbeck [00:57:48]:
And I know.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:57:51]:
I appreciate it. I hear it. There’s a dis there’s a there’s a disconnect.
Nancy Norbeck [00:57:57]:
I know. But I need to tell you that anyway because you deserve it. And you can let it sink in whatever way and whenever it gets there. But for anybody who’s listening, they need to hear it too. Because it is possible to let your determination lead the way and to know that when when you have something that you think the world needs to hear about, and that you know wasn’t right, and that you wanna get out because people need to hear about it, and that needs to be told, you can find the determination to tell it. Even when you started out saying, I’m not any good at grammar, and I’m not sure I know how to string words together, and that doesn’t have to stop you. And the things that your parents told you about your writing when you were a kid do not have to stop you. And you can end up writing a book that nobody has to know you ever felt that way about how you wrote that tells a story that people need to hear, that they can find themselves in even though it’s not their story?
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:59:13]:
If anybody needs to get ahold of me, I do have a newly birthed website.
Nancy Norbeck [00:59:19]:
And it’s beautiful. I don’t
Jamie Lyn Weaver [00:59:20]:
know if there’s I don’t know if there’s any survivors out there. I do think what I’ve done is difficult for any survivor. Yeah. I know that there are a few books out there done by survivors. We call ourselves retractors right now. We were we’ve retracted everything that we said, so we’re called retractors. So anybody that’s caught up in false memories or has been part of this, if they need to reach out, just go through my website. I’m there.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [01:00:02]:
There’s so many people that came and went. I was pretty much in isolate, so I don’t know a lot of people. I knew my roommates, but I don’t know else who went through and who survived and who didn’t. And I think in this case, it takes a survivor or a retractor of satanic panic to know, to really know what that was like.
Nancy Norbeck [01:00:37]:
Oh, I’m sure.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [01:00:38]:
A cancer patient can do a cancer patient, and a rape patient can do a rape patient. There’s there’s kin. Mhmm. And so all I know is that I’m here if you need validation. That way you knew was true and wrong and criminal.
Nancy Norbeck [01:01:07]:
Yeah. And just to be clear, the fact that Jamie has written a book does not mean that there’s any pressure for anybody else to write a book.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [01:01:17]:
No. Yeah. Not unless you got drugs. No.
Nancy Norbeck [01:01:22]:
Not unless you really want to. Right. No. Yeah. So, well, I, I am so grateful to you for coming and, and sharing this experience with all of us. I think it’s really inspirational and I hope that it helps people, both the book and this conversation, to know that it’s possible to do things even when we’ve been through hell and back, and that writing down your story really can be transformational and therapeutic. And even if nobody ever actually sees it and that there’s there’s value in that process all
Jamie Lyn Weaver [01:02:03]:
on its own. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I cannot say enough about the value of putting that down on paper. Even if you show it to no one, put it down on paper, have a ceremony, rip it up, put it on fire, whatever helps you let go of the shame and the guilt and know what’s never gonna go away. I will never be whole.
Jamie Lyn Weaver [01:02:38]:
I will never be what I was. I’ll never be what I was meant to be. I know that. Deeply, I know that. But given what I’ve done has lightened the load. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [01:02:58]:
Thanks so much, Jamie. I’m so glad you’ve joined us for this special episode with Jamie Lynn Weaver. If you know someone who could benefit from Jamie’s story, her book, Locked in the Psych Ward, is available now, and her offer to be in touch with other victims of the satanic panic is genuine. Her website is jamielynweaver.com, and that link is also in the show notes. Thanks so much for listening. See you next time. If you’re tired of thinking about answering a creative call but never actually doing it, come join me for an hour and start feeling like yourself again. The Follow Your Curiosity creativity circle is a safe, welcoming, and encouraging environment where we send the shoulds and inner critics off to summer camp where they’re kept busy rather than getting in our way.
Nancy Norbeck [01:03:48]:
You can find it at the link in your podcast app. See you there, and see you next week. Week. Follow Your Curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade. If you like Follow Your Curiosity, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to tell your friends. It really helps me reach new listeners.